Skies of New York
by Milli Moi
Summary: A big change in the lives of all the avengers happens with one tiny instance. If you need me you will find me, Zimo Soldat
1. Chapter 1

Bruce Banner held his world in his hands, looking out through one of the floor to ceiling glass windows, out at New York in all its never sleeping glory. The city was awake still, as awake as he was. It may have been brightly lit outside, brightly lit by the many street lights,the 24 hour stores, the flashing blue of ambulance and police flying through the night on their way to save lives.

The city lived on, on even though it had seen so many disasters in the past years, disasters he had helped to end. There was destruction caused by him, sure, but there were less lives destroyed, and a planet saved, which would have otherwise been destroyed.

Avengers tower was never somewhere he had expected to call home, and he never expected to become a father the way he had. Yes, he had dreamt of delivering his child- or at least, being by his wife's side as she delivered- but this was not quite how he had expected things to go.

He hadn't know, she said she hadn't either, that it was impossible- but she had successfully won every lie detector test that she had ever faced, you could never trust he not to lie- especially if she was emotional.

She had been diagnosed as a sociopath as soon as she was accepted by S.H.I.E.L.D., they had seen what a childhood of desensitisation had done and she would never be very in touch with her emotions. Emotions made her vulnerable. She had been trained never to be vulnerable, it compromised her skill set.

The child was dressed in a simple white sleeper. It had little pink roses on the cuffs, and the snaps were also pink. The only indication it was a girl. It's hair was a very light colour and fluffy, fuzzy as the hair of newborns often were, but already he could see a tinge, a sprinkling of red amongst the pale blonde. She was going to have her mother's hair. Probably her mother's spirit too. He found himself wondering so much about her, was he really her Father? What did that mean, did it mean she would have problems, anger problems, in the way he did? At best she may have some psychological issues, at worse-well- he had created the hulk-ess.

But now, watching this newborn child, still with a close peg on her umbilical stump, and a little bit of vernix still in her creases. Her hair was a little crispy and she was in need of her first bath.

Bruce hadn't held a baby since his time in India four years ago, and he had never bathed a newborn. There was something that scared him more about this child than any other- and it wasn't just that it's mother could break his neck with her thighs. This child was his. He had made this baby, it was his own body that had created it, his own hopeless and broken body had managed to create this, this amazing human being that was just perfect in every way, from her strawberry blonde hair to her squared finger nails.

Nadezhda.

It was the name he had been thinking about since he knew he was a father, it was the name of a client from a past life,a girl with long black hair and the eyes of a goddess. She had been the prettiest girl he had ever met, before Betty, before Natasha. That name had more meaning than simply beauty. The child had been born via IVF, she was named Nadezhda because of its meaning, the very thing that she had given to her parents back when he was still studying for his PhD, her name meant Hope.

That was what this little girl had given, this little princess as she was by all rights of lineage, she was his miracle, his reason to fight and do all he could to protect her, and the world around her.

The baby girl yawned, her little face screwing up and her chubby gums showing in her open mouth. He lifted her so carefully, so scared he could hurt her little body, and rested her little cheek against his shoulder, turning her inwards so that her face was in the crook of his neck. Her eyes shut and she seemed to be content, content enough to sleep.

Newborns liked heartbeats, it was the only thing the same for them once they had gone through the biggest change of all life- being born. Nadezhda was only hours old, she had just been fed expressed milk in a dropper and she was ready to put her little mind to rest.

He smiled, he had a daughter. He had a newborn baby, a little one, and he could hold her, feel her, smell, her.

He had saved this city and now, now he had a reason to protect it.


	2. Chapter 2

The room was dark when she awoke; the machinery around her head was glowing in a variety of hues. There was a spattering of lights through the rain covered glass at the other end of the room. The sick room wasn't a room often utilised in Avengers tower, in fact it was barely used at all as most of them were immune to normal sicknesses. This, this wasn't a sickness this was a chudo- a miracle – a miracle in all senses of the work. She had the scar, she remembered waking up from her operation, and she had never had a period in her whole life. They had completely sterilised her as a sixteen year old, how, it wasn't possible but somehow a baby had come out of her, a normal human baby that she must've been carrying. She hadn't even had morning sickness, all that had changed was that she'd occasionally felt a bit woozy after sparring sessions, but . All.

She was laying on one of the trolley beds from the Quinjet,a trolley that was narrow and had a water mattress. It also had bed guards,sides so she couldn't fall out. Underneath her was an absorbent pad, one of those you put under old people who were incontinent. She could feel the dampness on her thighs, the drying blood. She had a handprint of blood on her cheek, where she had tried to get herself to focus through the pain. She knew pain; she had been shot thirteen times in one day and survived within an inch of her life. That hadn't been pain, what she had experienced recently,within the last hour, had been pain. There was an oxygen SATs peg on her finger, a cuff around her arm to take her blood pressure, two prongs up her nose spoon feeding her oxygen and a blood transfusion attached to the pink butterfly of a cannula in her hand. She was sore, sore everywhere, her bones ached, her muscles wept for rest. As for down there, it was burning, a burning numbing pain that felt both like fire and like ice cubes in the same breath.

She dared to move, dared to try and sit up off her propping of pillows behind her head and on either side of her. Her boobs hurt, really hurt, like they were hard and turning to stone quicker with each passing moment. There were damp patches on her top,which she soon realised was the only thing she was wearing.

She had taken herself to bed before it happened, she'd been in the shower when her waters had broken, but she hadn't known that's what was causing the bloody colouring to the water on the wet room floor. Then the pain had started, she had been in sudden, extreme pain. It was her screaming which alerted the others, alerted Clint first of all, who had known the signs straight away with being a father of three he had seen labour. He knew it was labour, and he knew this wasn't the way it was meant to go. Bruce had done the work, brought the little thing into the world with the help of some homemade forceps. He had been opting for a caesareans section but given the scar she already had he hadn't wanted to risk it. She remembered Wanda and Clint at her sides, Clint grasping her by the elbow to hold her up and by the hand to give her somewhere to direct the pain. Her eyes had gone fuzzy around the edges, she couldn't see properly and just as she felt the fiery pain come to an end she lost her vision and blanked out.

What happened now? Did she just lie here until someone came to find her? Did she just wait for them to come and tell her what had happened. She knew the outcome. It had happened before. Natasha felt the lump in her throat beginning to form at the thought of it. She knew it would be like Rose.

The little creature flashed into her mind's eye for a moment but she refused to let it stay. This was the here and now, god, it was nearly seventy years- maybe even more than seventy years- later. She had only been in her twenties then, oh how things had changed. She didn't know how old she was now, ninety? surely not that old... It didn't matter how old she was, the past was called such for a reason, it would stay far away from the now.

Natasha had never been one to follow instructions- Petrovich had hated and loved it in the same breath, and because of her insistent need to break rules she sat herself upright on the bed. The burning between her legs became worse the moment she sat. Her head spun a little as she became upright but she refused to let herself faint. Not again.

Her arms felt like lead as she pushed the bed guard down and out of the way, her legs felt like lead as she attempted to lift them over the edge of the bed. They dangled numb and feelingless for a moment before she allowed herself to drop to her feet. Her legs didn't function, they buckled the second they hit the floor and she crumpled down in a heap.

Her body screamed in pain, she was so weak, so sore.

The door slammed open and she saw a pair of bluey-black trainers rushing towards her.

"Tasha! For the love of god woman!"

It was Clint's voice she heard, Clint's strong arms that scooped her up as if she were his bride and as much as dumped her back on the bed.

"You are ill." He begged with her,

"I am not ill, Barton, I'll be fine, just let me get back to work."

"Are you not gonna tell me anything!" He suddenly exploded, shoving his hands down on the bed guard and making it shudder in protest.

"Natasha you just had a baby, so much for being infertile, you can't have children and the next minute there's a healthy baby girl on the scene screaming her lungs out."

Natasha froze. She didn't know what to think, healthy. It was healthy, it was alive. It couldn't be, it wasn't possible, the experiments meant she could never give birth to a baby, she knew she couldn't. There were tears in her eyes and a lump in her throat but it wasn't happiness, happiness would mean she felt anything but numb.

It was alive.


	3. Chapter 3

"Bruce, she's awake," Clint called through the doorway into the enormous front room of the tower. He was still holding the now sleeping baby, Nadezdha. Nadezdha suited her, she was a pretty little thing already- or perhaps he thought that way for one simple reason, because he was her father. He was the one man who would love this little girl for the remainder of her life, no matter what happened nor what she did.

Right now he had to ignore his feelings as a father and move on to his feelings as a doctor- his intuition. Natasha would need cared for, she would need an explanation and although she wouldn't take it, she would need to be reassured. Natasha needed help too, even though his heart was drawn to the child, even though his allegiances to Natasha had become more professional than ever before, both his girls needed him equally.

He reluctantly, cradled the baby tightly and peeled her gently from his chest, laying her down in the make-shift cradle he had put together using some padding and a wooden drawer. He knew he should swaddle her in the comforter from the laundry cupboard but he didn't know how to, and so he simply wrapped the aqua coloured comforter under her feet, around her tiny body and tucked it up under her arm pits.

He shoved his feet back into his shoes, turned for the door and dimmed the ceiling lights. He had a last glance behind him at the sleeping baby who he was only just able to see above the edge of the drawer, and smiled to himself before carrying on to find Natasha.

When he got to the infirmary, or the sick room as it really was but Tony preferred words which were more grandiose, Natasha was sitting upright on her bed, her back was turned to the door with her facing the window, looking out on New York.

He swallowed, this wasn't going to be an easy conversation. Things had been, had been tense between them since the team had come back together. She had betrayed his trust, she had made him become the thing he hated most in the world. Yet he knew he had to forgive her. It had been several months since Ultron, since they had silently ended their... He didn't know what to call it, it wasn't a real relationship, but then could anyone have a real relationship with Natasha. She was distant, always distracted by work, she didn't always have what most would call a personality.

Bruce had read the notes, the notes that S.H.I.E.L.D. had kept in great detail. He had read her psych assessments, her lie detector tests. She was good, too good- the tests were all inconclusive. Natasha was a wonderful weapon, as she had been made to be, but she wasn't as wonderful a human.

"Natasha?" He tried to keep his voice light, gentle and non-confrontational but it wasn't easy. He wasn't exactly known for his good temper. She turned, trying to tuck a leg under herself then he saw her face crumple in pain.

"That, that's not a good idea, you've got stitches." She shrugged.

"I've had worse."

Bruce swallowed, he didn't know what was the write thing to say. He knew confronting Natasha never worked but he was angry, he was livid and struggling to keep it at bay. She had told him a bunch of lies, she had proven she could never be trusted, she was a spy more than she was a person.

"why did you lie! You told me, you told me it could never happen, you said you were sterile! Well I hate to break it to you Natasha, Sterile people don't just give birth!"

Natasha turned violently, causing herself to wince in pain.

"You think I made it all up? You think this scar came from nowhere? I believed it too Bruce!"

"You believed it? You who had been lied to for years, decades even? Natasha, I know you aren't that naive, tell me what you really know!"

"She died!" Natasha roared, tears threatening in her eyes, "They both died."


	4. Chapter 4

1943

The fire roared in the hearth, flames leaping and licking at the stone leading up to the chimney. Natasha groaned, a deep guttural groan, pushing her feet into the mattress she lay on. Her heels sunk in, pushing away the feelings. She was hot, too hot, even though it was around 30 degrees outside and so cold the windows and doors had stuck inside their frames. Her skin had droplets racing over its surface. She rubbed her forehead, her hand coming away wet.

Then it started again. Her stomach was squeezing, squeezing so hard against her will, the pain was beyond every understanding she had of pain. It was pure agony. She prayed it would stop, prayed that something would happen to prevent this pain.

She tried to grip the sheet under her but her damp, clammy hands slipped and slid on the soft fabric. She roared out in pain, her head flopping back and tossing around like a rag doll or a marionette on a string. Her heels dug in further, she could feel her body straining. She was too young, she wasn't ready. But she had caught first time, Nikolai had been so happy, thrilled.

The lump formed in her throat; Nikolai.

He was gone, gone a martyr of the war, a Martyr for Russia. Mother Russia had decided he was to fight, he was to die. But he had not been theirs to take. Niko was hers. He would never know what was coming.

Natasha's body seemed to arch against her will, pushing her chest up into the air, the laces on the front of the white nightdress she wore coming undone.

"Oh Natalia," the woman called, coming to Natasha's side. She stroked Natasha's hand,patting her like a pet. She felt like an animal, a sow or ewe, so full, so heavy; but her time had finally come.

She hadn't felt this with Nikolai, she had never been scared- even going so far as to say she had felt invincible with him. She remembered the twinges, the worry on Nikolai's face when she had felt the little pains. She had known it was going to be ok.

But he was dead.

The old woman, with wrinkles crumpling up her face like a piece of waste paper, left Natasha's side and she grabbed after her. All sense of comfort was gone, she didn't even know this woman, the woman had been a friend of Nikolai's- he had always planned for her to come here when her time came. They had planned Nikolai to be in the next room; waiting. Waiting to hear the cries of his first born, to hear the words 'you have a son,' or, 'you have a daughter.'

The old woman rushed round to the end of the little bed, pulling up the sheet that covered Natasha's legs. She peaked under, prodding a little, before reappearing,

"Well done Natalia, you are almost there, almost, now I need you to concentrate on me,"

Natasha listened to the words but her mind was elsewhere.

Nikolai had walked in one morning while she was dressing. He had seen her belly, it wasn't that big but it was neat, rounded and her navel stuck out. His eyes had widened, he had been stone faced and then, a grin broke out on his face.

"Natalia, we're going to have a baby."

"Push Natalia!"

She gritted her teeth, her whole body screaming. A grunting screaming noise escaped between her teeth. She pushed herself up on her arms which shook violently under her weight, under the pressure under the raw emotion. She felt the fire between her legs, the burn as the shoulders inched forward. She squeezed her stomach, the ab muscles she had gained over her years of training were rippling. She could do this, she would do it, for Nikolai.

She would give him the baby, the baby he had implanted in her belly. The seed that had gone inside her at the right time. It had happened once, on one opportune moment. They had made a baby. And she was going to have his baby, give birth to the perfect thing that Nikolai had left for her.

"Nnnyaaaaahh!" She screamed, and then with a whoosh, a splash of fluid she felt the pain release and the child slip from her body.

Her body flopped back against the pillows, she allowed a small smile to begin on her face, a smile which broke into a grin. She'd done it, she had managed to give birth, managed to survive it. She knew she was young, she knew the labour could have killed her but she'd done it, delivered her baby, the baby made from her love for Nikolai.

She looked up, looking between her legs to the woman who had delivered her child. The woman held her child in a white knitted blanket. The woman had made the blanket, a beautiful one, especially for the baby.

But she wasn't smiling, the woman rubbed the babies back roughly. Something was missing.

A cry.

There was no crying, not so much as a whimper. The child was totally silent. Natasha watched as the woman shook her head, a single tear slipping down her wrinkled face.

"I am so sorry Natalia."

Natasha felt her heart turn cold in her chest, something was wrong, but it couldn't be. Her baby, her baby had to be ok. Perhaps it was just sick, perhaps she had an infection which she had passed on; her poor baby.

But it got worse. The baby was silent. No, no.

The woman walked forwards, holding the swaddled infant in her arms, Natasha held her arms out- pushing against the pain in her lower body- and reached up, making a cradle with her arms to hold her baby, her own child; at last.

She took the child so soft in the white knitted blanket with its delicate pattern. The baby didn't move, it's chest didn't rise and fall. It was silent and still. She reached out her spare hand, stroked its soft cheek. The child's cheek was smooth and soft but cold.

Natasha had seen enough death to know its face.

She didn't cry, she didn't scream, she simply nodded. Her heart crushing into splinters, her throat closing up. She moved the blanket, the baby was perfect, it's little round belly, it's ten tiny toes and long but tiny fingers. It's arms were tucked up under its chin, it's legs curled in. It was a girl- she had thought it would be.

"She was already gone," the woman said softly, "do you want me to bury her?"

Natasha shook her head. She felt numb, as though a part of her- her very soul- had died with the child.

"As soon as I was well enough to walk, I buried her in the snow. She is in Dobročsky, Slovakia. I called her Rose."

Bruce, now calm, nodded. No wonder she had never said. He shook his head, coming over to sit with her on the bed, she glanced at him. He could tell by her blank expression that she was deeply upset by this, the whole situation had destroyed her as it would any woman. She had been a child, sixteen years of age, and her baby girl was stillborn.

Bruce shook his head as he sat,

"How did you, what made you think you could never have a baby?" He was aware he was speaking in a professional manner but this wasn't the time, Natasha was not ready for a domestic. She was confused, upset and grieving all over again even though the loss of her daughter had happened longer than his lifetime ago.

"I've had." She paused, "seventeen miscarriages. I was pregnant when we met, I lasted twelve weeks, miscarried days later. It's the same pattern every time."

"And still you go unprotected, you don't take a contraceptive?" She shrugged, looking at the floor.

"It's part of my job, besides most drugs don't work- my immunity is too strong due to the experiments."

Bruce nodded, making notes in his head, with each day he unpeeled a layer of Natasha, a layer where he began to know her more, a layer which allowed him to begin to forgive.


End file.
